24.May.2018

Eyes on the prize

Frank Rich, Jim Wright, and I (and some millions of others, presumably)
had a similar reaction to the not-surprising news that the
on-again/off-again summit is off again. The NY Times headline
writer didn't resist the
"pulls
out" trope, but the rest of us were all like "there goes the Nobel
prize, eh."

Apparently there were
recent
comments concerning our Vice President's recent comments. (Said
comments were said to be "ignorant and stupid" per the
Times, which is more measured that calling Mike Pence ignorant
and stupid, but finer points of bluster can be lost in the shouting.
Newsweek
reported further that our Veep was called a "political dummy." Some
fiery rhetoric there.)

The Norks are keeping an eye on Fox News too, it seems, and the
suggestion that "North Korea's government could end up like that of Col.
Muammar el-Qaddafi" would not be a new idea in Pyongyang. Didn't John
Bolton just bring that up? Why yes,
yes
he did.

"Bolton had spooked North Koreans recently by suggesting Pyongyang follow
the path taken by Libya more than a decade ago, when that country
abandoned its effort to build nuclear weapons in exchange for economic
benefits and warmer relations. Within a few years, Libya’s leader,
Moammar Kadafi, lost his job and his life at the hands of Western-backed
rebels."

North Korea's first threat to back out (or "pull out" if you like) named
Bolton personally, prompting Art Negotiator to walk back that "The
Libyan model isn’t a model that we have at all. We decimated that
country.” At least. Anything else?

By contrast, Trump promised that if the United States reaches a deal
with North Korea, Kim would “be running his country. His country would
be very rich.”

Now, alas. Our President sent
a
letter in his inimitable style, the seismograph signature obscuring
the "Sincerely yours" of his closing, but to His Excellency
(rather than "Supreme Leader" as
the
coin had it), with great appreciation for the "wonderful dialogue
[that] was building up between you and me." That was right after he
mentioned that his big sticks were "so massive and powerful that I pray
to God they will never have to be used."

"If you change your mind having to do with this most important summit,
please do not hesitate to call me or write. The world, and North Korea
in particular, has lost a great opportunity for lasting peace and great
prosperity and wealth. This missed opportunity is a truly sad moment in
history."

"The factors that led to the collapse of the summit were there from the
beginning. The only thing that ever seemed remotely promising about it
was Trump’s say-so, but Trump’s say-so is meaningless. Not only is he a
person who makes factual misstatements and lies, but he’s a person who
has gotten ahead in life through
extensive
use of bullshit, leaving in his wake a trail of broken
promises."

23.May.2018

Grading on the curve

"Look, there's an investigation going on by the Justice
Department. The Justice Department is headed by the Attorney General,
who is answerable to the President of the United States. If he gets up
there and says 'look, this is a foregone conclusion, he didn't do
anything wrong she didn't do anything wrong...' I mean, where is the
fairness, where's the objectivity, that, that, what he
should have said is 'look, there's an ongoing investigation, I'm not
going to wade into this, it's up to the Justice department, but he gave
them a clear clue and a clear direction as to where they should
take this. It was totally inappropriate."

As for Twitler using unsecured cellphones? NBD. Along with Ron Johnson
assuring us we don't need to concern our pretty little heads about this,
here's our member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
quoted
in HuffPo:

“I suspect the president of the United States is sophisticated enough to
know what he should or shouldn’t be talking about on an unsecured line.
We all have unsecured and secured lines, and in the business we’re in,
it’s just common knowledge what you talk about and don’t talk
about.”

For my money, I wouldn't take advice on "sophistication" and "common
knowledge" from a hypocritical country bumpkin. For good measure,
here's
Risch supposing that he and his BFF in the Oval Office ("This
president is very different than the former president") are working to
allow his family, friends, and constituents to "get up in the morning
and go to work and be left alone to pursue the life that they want to
pursue" rather than worrying about missiles flying over Idaho.

"The Trump family aspires to mafia status, a thuggocracy, but they are
manipulable and bumbling where Putin and company are disciplined and
Machiavellian. They hire fools and egomaniacs and compromised
figures—Scaramucci, Giuliani, Bannon, Flynn, Nunberg, the wifebeating
Rob Porter—and then fire them, with a soap opera’s worth of drama; the
competent ones quit, as have many lawyers hired to help Trump navigate
his scandals. The Trumps don’t hide things well or keep their mouths
shut or manage the plunder they grab successfully, and they keep
committing crimes in public...."

She goes on, in morbid detail, about the swamp we have slid into. You
should read the whole thing.

"Sabotage of national institutions, laws, standards, and the greater
good has been accepted as part of the new normal, which is staggeringly
far from normal....

"The current situation of the United States is obscene, insane, and
incredible. If someone had pitched it for a thriller novel or film a few
years ago, they would’ve been laughed out of whatever office their
proposal made it to because fiction ought to be plausible. It isn’t
plausible that a solipsistic buffoon and his retinue of petty crooks
made it to the White House, but they did and there they are, wreaking
more havoc than anyone would have imagined possible, from environmental
laws to Iran nuclear deals. It is not plausible that the party in
control of the federal government is for the most part a kleptomaniac
criminal syndicate.

"It’s an incompetent criminal syndicate full of leaks and stumbles,
easily played by the professionals across the sea. ..."

Based on... what "police believe," and some accusations, and charges,
and more of what "police believe." And just in case you didn't pick up
on the WE ARE CALLING THESE PERSONS ANIMALS in the headline and the
subhead, that word is repeated eight more times in the body of the "3
minute read," concluding with the supposed reassurance that "President
Trump's entire Administration is working tirelessly to bring these
violent animals to justice."

Justice would include a trial (or a pleading), and conviction, followed
by a sentence. Given the lack of any mention of those things, I have to
wonder if there have been any.

It brings to mind the case of the so-called Central Park Five in 1989,
when Donald Trump bought advertising advocating bringing back the death
penalty to finish them off. Their convictions were vacated as the result
of new evidence in 2002, and a dozen years after that, after
the
five won a civil rights case for the wrongful conviction, Trump
refused to admit he had been wrong,
let
alone apologize.

Trump is nothing if not a man with an exceptional sense of his own
privilege, a sociopathic lack of empathy, and a willful disregard for
the truth. He's an animal, the same as all humans are animals. (You
could look that up.) Having him and his current ghost-writer
propounding upon "justice" by declaring who they imagine is
sub-human, we've reached a new low, even if this is only
rabble-rousing red meat for campaign rallies.

Miller and Trump must think it terribly clever to bait the opposition
into defending people accused of heinous crimes, reciting conveniently
gruesome detail when it suits their purposes. It is theater, to be sure,
but dangerous, authoritarian theater with a real fascist flair.

Yesterday's realization of the tweeted
"hereby
demand" of the Department of Justice is in a similar vein, but more
to the point of Trump's continuing attempt to free himself of the
meddlesome special counsel and his investigation. It's been a year of
trying, and the plot just gets thicker and thicker. To say that the
president's obsession is not the behavior of an innocent man beggars
understatement.

I wanted to know why he got fired, of course, and it's a wade in before
you find out that he was a youth pastor at the Good Shepherd
United Methodist Church, which, I did not know Methodists did mega.
(They don't say which GSUMC, but maybe
Charlotte's, which says it
"currently averages over 2000 people in its six Sunday worship
services.") Then he worked at another "megachurch," in Raleigh, North
Carolina, which INDY discreetly declined to name. So, ah, how
many megachurches are there in Raleigh, and how can you hide one?
"Becoming increasingly corporate," was one of the church's faults from
his point of view, but wouldn't a megachurch have to be corporate?

At any rate, it's good to read that there's a big audience for liberal
Christianity. Whatever Jesus was, he would not have been comfortable in
today's Republican Party, or the NRA, or CPAC, or at a Trump rally. If
he'd showed up at the latter, he would be
that
guy who was mocked for having a "very dirty undershirt" that said
"Love is the answer."

“See, in the good old days this didn’t use to happen, because they used
to treat them very rough,” Trump said, thrilling his audience. “We’ve
become very weak.”

Crucifixion, for example. Those were the good old days.

The Jesus of our mythology (or inerrantly recorded and at times
contradictory Biblical history written decades after the fact and
assembled over the centuries, if you like) was not really what you could
call a "liberal." He was way out on a radical limb, which is how
he got himself hoisted on a cross. He would have probably got himself
into trouble at a Democratic party function, too. INDY's feature
on Pavlovitz winds up damning a bit with faint praise, it seems to
me.

"Pavlovitz isn't a radical. The topics he emphasizes, like gay rights
and women's rights, were resolved by liberal Christians years ago. And
unlike [Rev. William] Barber and [Jonathan ] Wilson-Hartgrove, he
doesn't frequently talk about the tougher, more structural issues of
poverty and racism that could require a radical reordering of society to
remedy.

"But that's probably part of why Pavlovitz is so popular. His is a
manageable liberalism, one that makes logical sense but isn't too
taxing. And yet, at a time when America seems to have taken a giant step
backward in how it views minorities and other vulnerable populations, he
might be exactly what the country—and the church—needs."

A manageable liberalism that isn't too taxing, ouch.

That's all a long wind-up for a link to his "Stuff That Needs to Be
Said" blog, and a post I see now is 15 months old, but timely enough:
Christian,
Stop Telling Me God is in Control. You may recall February, 2017,
for its "growing dumpster fire in DC," before it had reached a full-on
conflagration fueled by swamp gas. The "God is in control" meme he's
tackling fits in a bumper-sticker with room to spare, too. Let go. Let
God. That's not the way anything will get done, is his point.

"God works through the hands and words of the people who aspire to this
love and goodness, and choose to exercise the individual power they have
been entrusted with right where they’re standing. Jesus is not beamed
down from Heaven, he is incarnated in the flesh and blood of those who
believe that other people are worth sacrificing for, that mercy is the
greatest gift, that love is revolutionary."

Hear, hear.

20.May.2018

Our new aristocracy

Cover feature of the June issue of The Atlantic, Matthew
Stewart's remarkable
The
9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy. "The class divide is
already toxic, and is fast becoming unbridgeable. You’re probably part
of the problem."

It's a good, long read, even if he doesn't provide a recipe for fixing
the problems he describes. You can't do everything in a magazine
article. A broad, cogent, detailed identification of the problem is no
small thing.

"No one is born resentful. As mass phenomena, racism, xenophobia,
anti-intellectualism, narcissism, irrationalism, and all other variants
of resentment are as expensive to produce as they are deadly to
democratic politics. Only long hours of television programming,
intelligently manipulated socialmedia feeds, and expensively sustained
information bubbles can actualize the unhappy dispositions of humanity
to the point where they may be fruitfully manipulated for political
gain. Racism in particular is not just a legacy of the past, as many
Americans would like to believe; it also must be constantly reinvented
for the present. Mass incarceration, fearmongering, and segregation are
not just the results of prejudice, but also the means of reproducing
it. ...

"The defining challenge of our time is to renew the promise of American
democracy by reversing the calcifying effects of accelerating
inequality. As long as inequality rules, reason will be absent from our
politics; without reason, none of our other issues can be solved."

"Last week, several news outlets obtained financial records showing that
Michael Cohen, President Trump’s personal attorney, had used a shell
company to receive payments from various firms with business before the
Trump Administration. In the days since, there has been much speculation
about who leaked the confidential documents, and the Treasury
Department’s inspector general has launched a probe to find the source.
That source, a law-enforcement official, is speaking publicly for the
first time, to The New Yorker, to explain the motivation: the official
had grown alarmed after being unable to find two important reports on
Cohen’s financial activity in a government database. The official,
worried that the information was being withheld from law enforcement,
released the remaining documents."

The missing reports concerned three million dollars in
transactions. Not to put too fine a point on it. And oh, "a substantial
portion of this money seems to have ended up in Cohen’s personal
accounts." The source is risking a fine of $250,000 and/or 5 years in
jail for divulging contents of a confidential Suspicious Activity
Report.

15.May.2018

ZTE first

After The Great Negotiator killed the Chinese telecom equipment
manufacturer you never heard of (in spite of them being the
fourth largest smartphone supplier to the US market) with a single blow,
less than a week ago, let's rethink this. Starting with
a
tweet about Dear Leader instructing the Commerce Department to "give
massive Chinese phone company, ZTE, a way to get back into business,
fast." Uh, what?

Have you heard the one about
the
Indonesian theme park planned to include "Trump-branded hotels,
residences and a golf course", and Chinese loans to back it to the tune
of $half a billion? Tell the tale with slack-jawed incredulity.

"At Monday’s White House news conference, reporters asked how, precisely, the involvement of China in the Indonesia resort project didn’t violate the
emoluments
clause of the Constitution, and how it squares with the
president’s assurances that the Trump Organization wouldn’t get
involved in “foreign deals” as long as he remained in the White House.
Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah
recommended
contacting the Trump Organization for comment."

The disrespect industry

"[I]t's an industry, plus a political movement. The right has a gigantic
media apparatus that is devoted to convincing people that liberals
disrespect them, plus a political party whose leaders all understand
that that idea is key to their political project and so join in the
chorus at every opportunity."

Any serious talk, of any substance, of any length, can be boiled down to
a 10 second sound bite taken out of context and made to sound horrible.
Waldman gives two examples, but you can find two a day without
breaking a sweat.

"This is a game [Democrats] cannot win, so they have to stop playing.
Know at the outset that no matter what you say or do, Republicans will
cry that you’re disrespecting good heartland voters. There is no bit of
PR razzle-dazzle that will stop them. ... Advocate for what you believe
in, and explain why it actually helps people.

"Finally—and this is critical—never stop telling voters how
Republicans are screwing them over. The two successful Democratic
presidents of recent years were both called liberal elitists, and they
countered by relentlessly hammering the GOP over its advocacy for the
wealthy. And it worked."

14.May.2018

Violations

The 2015
Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action between the U.S., the U.K., Russia,
France, China, Germany, the European Union, and Iran, is no small thing.
It held the promise of enlarging the community of trading commerce, and
by doing so, reducing the motivations for conflict. Beats the heck out
of nuclear conflagration, or the threat thereof.

Our country's current leader used it—continues to use it—as
a campaign prop, calling it "the worst," and "horrible." He leveraged
the fact that it (like our lukewarm commitment to
the Paris
climate accord) was a "nonbinding political agreement," wrangled
during Obama's terms in spite of noncooperation (at best) from
Congress. They didn't approve it. But they couldn't muster enough
disapproval to actually veto action by the executive.

The 8-party agreement is nothing if not complicated. Even the Wikipedia
page is a tough slog, well over the capacity of our current president, I
would imagine. Easier to take John Bolton's word for it and boil it down
to "worst ever" before a crowd of partisans, imagine some one-on-one
deal, or gee, isn't it time to shoot off some more ordnance?

After the 2016 election, the Senate chipped in a 10-year renewal of
the Iran Sanctions Act. Within half a year, Trump's administration was
violating the agreement more or less directly:

"The Trump administration boasted that Trump personally lobbied dozens of
European officials against doing business with Iran during the May 2017
Brussels summit; this likely violated the terms of the JCPOA, which
expressly states that the U.S. may not pursue "any policy specifically
intended to directly and adversely affect the normalization of trade and
economic relations with Iran". The Trump administration certified in
July 2017 that Iran had upheld its end of the agreement. In October
2017, however, the Trump administration refused to recertify Iran's
compliance with the deal, saying that "Iran has violated the agreement
multiple times."

Violating the "spirit" of the deal, it was said. The other parties to
the deal, including the leaders of the U.K., France, Germany, the E.U.
and Russia disagreed, and said Iran was upholding its end of the
bargain.

Now we've "officially" backed out of our end of the bargain, and Trump
is blustering as if he alone can nix it. Facts on the ground are harder
to ignore. By blowing up Iraq and its government—quite
literally—we increased Iran's regional power immeasurably, now
playing out in the conflicts in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. Saudi Arabia
seems to have its hands full destroying Yemen.

It seems that the best thing that could happen would be for the
other 7 parties to continue the agreement without us, accurately
reflecting the diminution of our country's leadership and credibility
under the rule of our fatuous populist. Our military-industrial complex
will take a hit in trade, but the other countries can pick up the
slack.

12.May.2018

Perhaps there is an alternate approach

Perhaps
a
morbid joke in really bad taste should have been left to die a quiet
death in secret, but word got out, and what previously litte-known
staffer Kelly Sadler said about Sen. John McCain's opposition to Gina
Haspel for head of the CIA spoiled a lot of people's day.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, for one, was not happy.

It might be best to keep some of your thoughts to yourself. As if, what
would it be like to see those comments on the front page of the New York
Times or something? If you're not sure, clam up.

At one point, per a source in the room, White House strategic
communications director Mercedes Schlapp interjected with a word of
support for Sadler:

“You can put this on the record... I stand with Kelly Sadler.”

So noted, Mercedes. It helps put that indignation you felt over Michelle
Wolf's job at the White House Correspondents Dinner into perspective,
too.

11.May.2018

Can't keep up

The verbal stylings or our current White House resident:

"Virtually everything said has been said incorrectly, and it's been said
wrong, or it's been covered wrong by the press. ... There has been a lot
of misinformation, really."

Is he talking about his new lawyer? The Rudy Giuliani roll-out had some
glitches. In an appearance before the Judge (Jeanine), Giuliani was
asked:

"Did you misspeak, or did people... not interpret what you were saying?
[sic] Were you talking about the facts or were you talking about
the law?"

Rudy said he was talking about "the law, and the conclusion."

"The facts, the facts, I, I, I, I'm still learning. This is, you know 1.2
million documents, I've been in the case for two weeks, virtually
one day in comparison to other people."

Ah, sure, ok, 2 weeks, that's virtually one day, why not? Don't stop
there. 2 weeks is virtually the blink of an eye when compared to
geologic time. Let me plug in my reality distortion field generator
before we continue. By Sunday, that jaw-dropping performance with George
Stephanopoulos on ABC This Week, "Those are the facts that
we're still, uh, work, working on."

That's it. We're still working on the facts. Comedy curveballs
are hanging for
Seth Myers,
among others. Myers also took
A
Closer Look at the murmurings about the question of whether Trump
deserves a Nobel Prize.

"Everyone thinks so," Trump allowed, before modestly adding that
he would certainly not say so. But then... "Everything can be
scuttled."

Gina Haspel's confirmation hearing to head the CIA, for example?
Whether torture is flat-out "immoral," that's a really hard
thing for her to say. Even with hindsight.

Would you follow a direct order from the president to waterboard
someone? I.e. torture someone. Incredibly, she said,

"I do not believe the president would ask me to do that."

Why not? Can we not take him at his word when he says something devoid
of decency and morality, and wholly in keeping with his public life,
such as this gem from the 2016 campaign?

"I would bring back waterboarding, and I would bring back a hell of a
lot worse than waterboarding."

But on a more serious note,
this
nice mash-up of the parallels in the comedic stylings of Richard
Nixon and Mike Pence; it's been a year already, people, isn't it time we
wrap up this whole Mueller investigation thing? I mean, what do we have
to show for it anyway?

It's not like we need a big spreadsheet to keep track of the people have
been charged, pleaded guilty, and so on. Oh wait.
Yes
we do. (And as of the moment, Wikipedia's only up through the end of
April. No Michael Cohen yet! Not in the table; he's sprinkled through
the article though, how could he not be?)

This just in, add to Rudy Giuliani's reading list, as he tries to work
on the facts:
A
Qatari spy just got caught bragging about a payoff to Trump campaign
member, reported in the Washington Press I never heard of
before, but with
a
link to a stack of court filings, which I did not read. Grant Stern
says they say it's claimed "agents of the nation of Qatar gave a payoff
to convicted former Trump NSA, Gen. Michael Flynn, and also that he had
accepted those payments." Former Attorney General John Ashcroft makes an
appearance in the story too. Didn't see that coming. Good for
him, he did take care of Foreign Agents Registration Act paperwork for
representing the Qatar Investment Authority.

10.May.2018

The Staples bait and disappearing discount

If you're still printing in your home or office, you must have you've
got some spent cartridges kicking around. Toner, or ink, they're
expensive coming in, and are still worth something when empty (or
when—ahem—rejected by your printer). Office supply
stores buy wholesale and sell retail, whether the product is new or old,
so what they offer you for "returns" or recycling is less than a
cartridge is worth. That's fine. How much less? Well, I don't
need to care very much.

In Staples' case, a handy recycling bag advertises a simple proposition
in big red ink:
Recycle any ink cartridge Get
$3 adding (in green, blends in with the surroundings)
to spend on ink at Staples.
So, ah, $3 credit, yeah? That's the bait. The other side of the bag has
instructions. (1) put the cartridge in the bag; (2) bring it to the
store; (3) "Get a $3 OFF coupon for every empty you give us. (Think of
it as $3 off you next cartridge.)"

There's a lot to unpack there for a $3 deal. Step 3, I'm "giving"
them cartridges? "Think of it as," in other words, it's really something
else? I had 5 cartridges to recycle/sell/give away, and asked about the
quantity, versus the single cartridge I was there to buy today. The
checker assured me that they'd take that quantity as long as I hadn't
hit my 10/month quota. I assured I had not. (She checked my record to
see if I was telling the truth.) They were happy to take all 5. And in
return... the 37½" long receipt starts with my "Rewards" number,
and this:

5 INK RECYCLING LIMI *
725137 0.010ea 0.00
Instant Savings

The asterisk on the truncated LIMIT says "Item is currently on
promotion. Some coupons are only valid on regular priced items. Please
see coupon terms and conditions for details." Referring to a coupon I
have not yet seen.

The spent cartridges are on "promotion"? They're assigned a nominal 1
cent value, and rung up as if I were BUYING rather than SELLING, but
they're kind enough to give me an "instant savings" of the 5 cents.

The rest of the receipt has a sweepstakes entry tease, and three long
coupons, for $20 off an order of $60 or more, $10 off an order of $30 or
more (both with a long enough list of what's excluded that I have to
wonder if there's anything that is included), and 15% off UPS
shipping services. All with expiration dates. Can't leave something that
valuable hanging around.

My coupons will come... later. And no doubt be excluded from anything
less than full retail, and from being using more than one at a time, and
with an expiration date. I'm not getting $15 off my next cartridge, you
can be sure. The chance of me ever saving an actual $15 is smaller than
my chance of being one of the 10 lucky winners of $1,000 in Print and
Marketing Services. (Would I really want Marketing Services from this
company?)

The receipt tells of "$2 back in Rewards per recycled ink cartridges. Up
to 20 per month. Minimum purchase required. Exclusions Apply. See an
associate for full program details or to enroll."

Let me boil it down for you: thanks for donating your spent
cartridges. We'll be in touch with exciting offers for you to make
future purchases. Play your cards right, we'll take a little something
off your bill. Good luck.

Update:
Took a look at the Staples daily email advertising I usually just
delete, and
wandered
around to find some elaboration under the supposed frequently asked
"question," I want to learn more about ink recycling rewards.
Here we go:

"Staples Rewards members receive $2 back in Staples Rewards for every
eligible cartridge recycled in person at a Staples store or online at
staples.com/rewards. Base members can earn $2 back on up to 10 recycled
cartridges per calendar month and up to 20 for Premier members, if the
member has spent at least $30 in ink and/or toner purchases at Staples
over the previous 180 days. Minimum purchase requirement is net of
coupons, taxes, rewards redemptions, and shipping charges. Ink Recycling
rewards are issued monthly, separately from the standard Staples Rewards
statement. Ink resellers and remanufactures are strictly prohibited from
earning Ink Recycling Rewards."

That dependent clause, "if the member has spent at least $30..." So, I've
got 179 days to buy at least one more cartridge to unlock my $10 (not
$15) savings. (My last purchase was in... July, sorry, time's expired on
that.) Let's just say I won't use a pen to include that in the
budget.

8.May.2018

A simple way to improve a billion lives: eyeglasses

That's the online title of the New York Times piece that ran on Sunday's
front page under the headline
A
Health Crisis That Costs $1.50 to Correct. As in, "factories in
Thailand, China and the Philippines can manufacture so-called readers
for less than 50 cents a pair; prescription glasses that correct
nearsightedness can be produced for $1.50."

We're privileged to pay more than that in our country. Readers are
cheap enough, but a couple diopeters worth of correction for myopia, a
twist of astigmatism, and eventually some bifocals, it's not hard to
spend more than a hundred times a buck fifty where I live.

Think of it, though - a billion times $1.50 is about the rounding error
for a lot of federal agencies' annual budgets.

I've been wearing glasses for almost my whole life. There was a pleasant
interlude of a dozen years after I started using contact lenses, and
before presbyopia set in when I felt like I
could just see the world directly. Before that, glasses. After
that (and from time to time), more glasses, with more lenses. Forget
about "four eyes," I'm "six eyes" most days. And rather than
complaining, I appreciate the convenience of having good (or
well-corrected) vision for close work, for reading, and for
distance. You get used to it.

I got my start with glasses in 2nd grade, under extreme duress.
For the 6th kid in line, mom had some experience in diagnosis, and
thought what the heck, she could do what the optometrist did and ask me
"is this better, or worse?" when I tried on a hand-me-down pair of
glasses. It was better! It was nice to be able to see things clearly.
So, I was off to school one day, wearing my sister's old cat-eye style
glasses, and oh. my. god.

I don't remember a single detail of what happened, just the stinging
cloud of ridicule and shame heaped upon me for showing up with girl's
glasses. (We didn't talk about gender fluidity back then.) I swore
off any possibility of wearing glasses... for most of three years. By
5th grade, even sitting in the front row for every class wasn't good
enough, and with firm encouragement from teacher to parents, I had my
own eye exam, and my own (new) pair of glasses, with my own
prescription.

When I reached the part of the story where 12% of the students at a high
school in Panipat, two hours north of New Delhi were sent to the next
room for "more tests," and...

Shivam, the boy who dreamed of being a pilot, walked away with a pair
of purple-framed spectacles donated by Warby Parker, the American
eyewear company, which also paid for the screenings.

“Everything is so clear,” Shivam exclaimed as he looked with wonder
around the classroom.

That made me gasp, with a powerful wave of remembering such a moment,
the world around me brought to sharp focus, and the old, out-of-focus
world sloughed off like dirty clothes.

It would take so comparatively little to spread that basic joy to others
who need it in our world.

Nepotism and corruption, the likes of which the world has never seen

We've certainly had our share of domestic scandals over the years. Wikipedia
contributors have compiled
a
list organized by administration, but with so many to choose from,
we need some sort of classification scheme. Set aside run-of-the-mill
sexual misconduct (as we did to accept Clarence Thomas for his sinecure
on the Supreme Court, for example), even as it's finally getting its due
in many quarters. Set aside the petty potentate with the $50/night crash
pad in DC who thinks he's Maxwell Smart running the EPA with a license
to tour the world in peddling influence. Focus in on the stinking rot at
the very top of the executive branch, where the Trump family businesses
have been elevated above issues of national security.

As Jill
Abramson wrote two months ago, "our senses have been dulled." It
seems quaint to remember that Donald Trump never released his tax
returns, waving a red flag of corruption with a pretense of an excuse,
then repeating it steadfastly enough that the news cycled on to fresher
scandals.

"The fact that Donald Trump is personally profiting off his presidency is
an open secret in Washington as a stroll through the lobby of the new
Trump Hotel in the grand Old Post Office proves. Just about anyone who
wants a White House favor or a meeting is there, dropping at least $500
per night. Ka-ching for the Trump Organization."

"We’ve seen this same playbook before – in places like Uganda, the
Philippines and other countries where rulers and their families loot the
public. We didn’t think we would see it come to the United States. But
we are living in the era of reality television government. And the name
of our show is American Greed."

Speaking of temporary lodging and scandalous context, this just popped
up in my Twitter feed to make the point:

In a half-normal presidency, the main scandal right now would be about how a guy died in a fire at a cheaply built, run down, improperly sprinklered building that the president’s blind trust hadn’t been able to find a buyer for.

But all that is ancient news by now. This week, we're trying to figure
out whether Rudy Giuliani's absurd dog and pony show on Fox News is as
unhinged and incompetent as the face of it, or if the "mind-bending"
conversation with Sean Hannity is
a
calculation, not a mistake. Since last Wednesday, Margaret Sullivan
writes,

"Rudy Giuliani has blithely skipped from one media appearance to another
without apparent regard for consistent adherence to the facts.

Rosen refers to Jonathan Karl's analysis for ABC News,
Trump's
coming war on Mueller, which leads with a video from This
Week, and this Q/A in the White House press briefing:

"When the president so often says things which turn out not to be true,
when the president and the White House show what appears to be a blatant
disregard for the truth, how are the American people to trust or believe
what is said here or by the president?"

The press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders answers with a blatant
disregard for the truth.

"We give the very best information that we have at the time, uh, I do
that every single day and will continue to do that, uh, every day I'm in
this position."

Karl was on the show, advancing his theory:

"Mueller and the investigation are now central to the Trump midterm
election strategy and his re-election strategy. They want to vilify,
they want to delay this investigation, they want to draw it out, you'll
see more interviews like this. They actually want this issue to be front
and center because George, they believe that the biggest motivator for
the Trump base in the midterm elections will be fear of
impeachment."

It's the Witch Hunt, don't you know. Not the stem-to-stern corruption of
Trump family businesses, not the stunning day after day, week after
week, month after month reversals of "fact patterns" that would make
George Orwell's head spin. It's the whole Republican Party going
along with the gag that integrity does not matter anymore. Not even a
pretense of integrity.

7.May.2018

Let them not eat toast

Had my first experience of the east coast chain of gas & grocs, I
guess it is, although no gas at the DC Wawa
I patronized. It was convenient, mostly. My hotelier suggested it in
response to my inquiry about where I might find dinner, and the further
type-qualification as to what I was after as "food."

They have a touch screen ordering interface at the sandwich bar that was
new to me, which seemed a bit odd at first, but proved capable of
delivering a rather tasty, toasted sandwich, complete with the assembly
components and process instructions ("close hinge") on the checkout tally.
I was happy enough with the result to give them repeat business, and the
2nd time through the menu, I noticed the up-front warning that
toasted sandwiches did not qualify for EBT purchases.

It caught my eye, even though I'm not in the program, and a client was
paying for my dinner. The whole store was my oyster, but all I wanted
was a healthy sandwich. Would I like it toasted? Yes, I like
toasted.

For those who do need to care, the
Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits are intended to be
spent on food; not alcohol, not tobacco, e-cigs, pet food,
household supplies, and so on. The Food and Nutrition Act of 2008
defines what is, and is not "food" for its purposes.

The USDA wants us to know that they're just doing what Congress told
them to do, and "several times in the history of SNAP, Congress
considered placing limits on the types of food that could be purchased
with program benefits" but "concluded that designating foods as
luxury or non-nutritious would be administratively costly and
burdensome." There's even
an
11-page report on the subject.

A bag of potato chips and a bottle of pop are fine. Have some ice cream.
Cold is cool, hot is not.

"Hot food and any food sold for on-premises consumption" are n.g. If
you plan on too much food preparation at home, that's also n.g.:
live animals and birds are generally not eligible. Pumpkins are cool.
Inedible gourds, not cool.

In the context of our nation's capital, oozing money out most every
edifice and orifice, where legislators and staffs and hangers-on of
every stripe find ways to get someone else (whether the government, a
personable corporation, or a wealthy donor with an agenda) to pay for
gross excess, the legal boundary seemed especially ironic. If you're
struggling to make ends meet, no soup for you. Unless perhaps you'd like
some cold soup, to go.

5.May.2018

Gross-up

Wall-to-wall Giuliani coverage continues, from news in print to the
comedy show bonanza. Friday's WaPo led with two front page stories under
his name, although pictures and the left-hand lead were about Charlie
Rose's 4 decades as a, how shall we say, ladies' man? (However we
say it, let's hope it suffices to quash that sexual predators' comeback
tour.) Almost pushed below the fold, Dan Balz' "The Take":
Again,
Trump is caught in a lie. Will it change anything? Lucky for them,
Scott Pruitt's travel follies, and the Republican dream of arming school
teachers were pushed down to the bottom.

The "Take" and the jumps took up most of the page 6-7 spread. Repayment
disclosure sets off another crisis for the White House. Experts see
problems with Giuliani's account of Trump's payment. Giuliani's story
comes with legal peril, it's in that sort of vein.

There's a term of art in the business world for bonuses that come with a
bonus: a little something extra to cover your taxes is called "grossing
up"; the gross bonus is enlarged to provide the jolly round
net bonus that you can tell your friends about. A $100 bonus
might get grossed up to $150, so that after the taxes were settled you
still get your whole Benjamin.

Rudy's little kicker, quoted in the
"Experts
see problems" story, talking about how Michael Cohen's $35,000 a
month "retainer" covered whatever friendly "personal" damage control
might be needed (it works out to 3.2 porn stars a year), this:

"He trusted Michael and Michael trusted him. Michael knew that when he
laid out the $135,000, he'd get it back and the president was always
going to make sure he got it back – and enough money to pay the
taxes."

"They got this news out there on their terms, and they didn't wait for
enterprising journalists to break it. This is PR 101... The
president deserves his own team defending him, and now finally he has
it."

Is that the good news, or the bad news? It's a bit hard to follow.

Today's news is that
Giuliani
tries to clarify comments, or as the president put it, "He'll get
his facts straight." One of these days, maybe we'll all get our facts
straight, but I don't think anyone expects that to come funneling out of
the White House, or Rudy Giuliani, or Donald Trump. Michael Cohen's
lawyer said he planned to take the 5th, but that big search warrant
haul,
res ipsa
loquitur, once the special master sorts it out.

That last Washington Post url has the chyron that was hanging on
the TV much of the day yesterday, "Trump says he'd love to testify in
Russia probe if treated fairly."

Oh, we all want you to be treated fairly, Mr. Trump. That's how
justice serves desserts.

4.May.2018

The impeachment lawyer joins the team

The new guy on the legal team, Emmet Flood, got a pleasant introduction
by Rosalin S. Helderman for the WaPo.
"A
very steady hand," the headline says, with deep experience. Clerked
for Scalia, helped get Bill Clinton and "Dick" Cheney out of their jams.
Covered for W. in 2007 after the firing of 7 U.S. Attorneys. He "advises
clients to curb public comments about ongoing investigations that
prosecutors could exploit," so he and Rudy might not get on.
Then-governor of Virginia Bob McDonnell didn't take his counsel's
advice, and Flood quit over that, see how that turned out. (After
McDonnell was convicted,
Chief
Justice John Roberts took the opportunity to use it as a vehicle to
further define corruption out of existence. Bribery is such an
ugly word; we now prefer
"common
political pleasantries," thankyouverymuch.)

But here's the fascinating part, after he's been fishing around for this
job for almost a year:

Flood "interviewed [in the weeks after Mueller was appointed] for the job
he has now accepted, a position on the White House staff in which his
primary responsibility will be to defend the institution of the
presidency, rather than Trump personally."

I'm all for that. Let's get this swamp drained, shall we?

2.May.2018

The second season jumps the shark

The new strategy seems to be to just do it all out in the open and dare
anyone to say boo. Is this really happening?

With the Special Counsel's investigation closing the seine, fewer and
fewer genuine lawyers willing to sign up for teh crazy, Trump is now
recycling burned-out pals. Rudy Giuliani on the team? And huh, a "leak"
of supposed questions from Mueller's team, which has been leakless to
date.

And for the capper, the new guy is off on a publicity tour, seriously?
The on-again, off-again $130,000 worth of hush money, it's back on:
Giuliani
said on Wednesday that yeah, the president repaid his longtime
lawyer Michael Cohen.

Talk about an incredible story, eh?

But wait, he's not done!

He's gone straight to the Mother Lode, Sean Hannity's show on Fox "News" to
call
for Comey to be prosecuted, end to Mueller probe "in the interest of
justice."

"I wanna report to the American people... the truth," Hannity said.
"Have I been wrong, at all?"

Giuliani still has "that big chart" from 2015 on his cell phone.

"Russian collusion is a total... fake news," Giuliani offered.

"Meanwhile, the man is trying to deal with North Korea. I mean,
c'mon."

Yeah, c'mon.

May Day

All your blockchain are belong to us

"Some of the technologists at the meeting of the International Standards
Organization were surprised when they learned that the head of the
Russian delegation, Grigory Marshalko, worked for the F.S.B., the
intelligence agency that is the successor to the K.G.B.

"They were even more surprised when they asked the F.S.B. agent why the
Russians were devoting such resources to the blockchain standards.

“Look, the internet belongs to the Americans — but blockchain will
belong to us,” he said, according to one delegate who was there. The
Russian added that two other members of his country’s four-person
delegation to the conference also worked for the F.S.B."

Why can't we be friends?

ICYMI, it was August, 2015 that North Korea
turned
back time by half an hour. To celebrate the 70th anniversary of
Japan's defeat in WW II, and the liberation of the Korean peninsula.
Throwing off the imperialist running dog time zone.

And now, in an opening salvo of
a
surprise campaign of diplomacy, Mr. Kim has "vowed to readjust
his country’s clock to match the time zone in South Korea." Think of it
as a Great Leap Forward by 30 minutes. To show how willing he is to
negotiate things. He'd like to negotiate all sorts of things, for as
long as possible, maybe.

In related news,
Kim's
nuclear testing mountain has collapsed (5th time's the charm), with
a swarm of earthquakes near the Chinese border, and who knows, maybe
triggering a volcanic eruption of Mount Paektu? That seems like a nice
time to give up conducting nuclear tests for a while, and seeing if he
can parlay that into some political donations from the South, and the
US. 65 years after the end of the war, and with the generation that
did the fighting on their last legs, it doesn't seem too
precipitous to talk about a peace treaty, anyway.

John Bolton is still wary, of course. He's familiar with bluster and
deception and feints without substance. But it sure beats wondering if
we're on the brink of unleashing fire and fury, the likes of which the
world has never seen, in service to the never-ending campaign of our
own autocrat.

In news from the third leg of the Axis of Evil, Bibi Netanyahu delivered
a stunning PowerPoint presentation to his audience of one. Let's see if
he can put it in terms that even Donald Trump can understand:
"Iran
lied. Big time." See if the subtle irony in Matthew Norman's opinion
piece for the Independent pokes through for you:

Iran’s Project Amad, styled “secret” by the leader of a country yet to
admit having nuclear weapons more than half a century after it began
making them, was known to the UN atomic agency and others long ago, and
terminated in 2003. The notion that Iran has retained the data with a
view to reviving it if ever it feels sufficiently threatened – if a US
president, for example, withdrew from a non-nuclear deal – only
reinforces the importance of maintaining the deal.

On the relatively sane listener, Netanyahu’s presentation will have had
the opposite effect to the one intended. So it was that Trump responded
within minutes with a tweeted: “What we’ve learned has really shown that
I’ve been one hundred per cent right.”

It's a record! And 10% higher than previously estimated. Half. A.
Trillion. Dollars. In one quarter. While the economy is ticking
along pretty decently, unemployment sort of under control, interest
rates and inflation still sunny side.

"Tax and spending measures approved by Congress and President Donald
Trump are expected to push the budget gap to $804 billion in the current
fiscal year, from $665 billion in fiscal 2017, and then surpass $1
trillion by 2020, according to the Congressional Budget Office."

Should we be, um, worried?

In an accompanying statement about the state of the economy, the
Treasury said Monday that tax changes are “poised to underpin near-term
consumption and investment” and “the stage is set for a pick-up in
growth over the near term.”

Which is not to be confused with
the most recent
reporting on the economy,
such as summarized
for us by the BBC, saying that growth slowed to 2.3%, well down from
the 4th quarter of last year, at 2.9%. Growth in consumer spending was
the weakest part of the puzzle: 1.1% versus 4% at end of 2017 (thanks to
"an intense hurricane season last year").

"Analysts expect growth will accelerate in the next quarter as US
workers begin to see the impact of the Trump administration's $1.5
trillion income tax package trickle through to their pay cheques."